DARLINGTON, S.C.—David Ragan was not surprised that Brad Keselowski tweeted his anger following the Sprint Cup race Sunday at Talladega Superspeedway.

Upset over how Ragan lined up for the final restart and used his position in the outside lane to help win the race, Keselowski tweeted “So i should Be happy when think someone cheats the game and costs you a win?!”

Ragan was actually following NASCAR’s orders, and Keselowski, who started on the inside lane and finished 15th, issued an apology on Tuesday.

“I owe David Ragan and his fans an apology,” he posted on his website. “I placed blame on David Ragan for the restart lineup confusion when it wasn’t his fault.”

Ragan said after the race that he knew eventually NASCAR would explain to the defending Cup champion that it had reset the restart order and that Ragan was just moving into the position he was told.

“I wasn’t really surprised by the tweets afterward because Brad is known to speak his mind, whether he’s right or wrong or he knows the whole story or half the story,” Ragan said.

“That’s ultimately what it was. Brad’s a smart guy. He’s the champion. He comes from a family of racers. He knows the rules. I just don’t think he understood what was going on.”

Keselowski called Ragan in addition to issuing the public apology.

“There were never any hard feelings toward Brad (from me),” Ragan said. “But that was cool for him to do that. He certainly didn’t have to. That was something he did on his own, and I’ve got a lot of respect for him for that.”

Keselowski said Friday night that his team eventually explained to him what had happened and he wanted to issue an apology in part because of what was aired by a television network he did not identify.

“People got upset about it,” Keselowski said. “There’s one particular TV show that likes to take half of my audio and play the worst parts and made it a worse situation than probably what it needed to be, so I had to do what I could to showcase, one, that they didn’t know what they were talking about and, two, that I felt like David did deserve the credit for the win.”